When I Was My Once Poem by Romella Kitchens

It was there when I was a child.
As soon as you stepped out of the car,
you could smell Sears Department Store…

This reality-aroma of overpriced nuts and candies and clean, new clothes we could
barely afford.

Everything plastic, metal and unobtainable
but seductive.
My stomach would pang with desire.

We would go in.
My mother would look but most items
were too expensive.

Sears & Roebuck on hot Summer days, in
East Liberty, Pittsburgh.
Its fine turquoise blue exterior.
Those beautiful, brown skinned, copper
penny hued, kids wheeling circle
after circle around their hunger.

My mother would always stop before
we left and hand one of them money
so they could go up the street and
buy hot dogs, potato chips, soda pop or tiny milks.
They took the money gladly, raced away
on their bicycles eagerly. So hungry.
So hungry.

That dry, dusty starvation scent to them.
Those paper dollars hope, a societal caring.
I will always remember them.
Their circles around that urban Pittsburgh parking lot.
Oh, how dizzy, almost faint, their circumvention made me…
How I felt then sometimes about the world…
Hunger has a face to it.
It has a beautiful, dutiful name.